Which Bible Translation is Best?

How to begin choosing a Bible translation that fits your needs.

There are lots of opinions on this topic and, as with all opinions, each one is valid! It is not the intention of this article to critique various translations or to speculate about why people felt the need to create new versions. Each translation serves a different purpose. And, obviously, they all have value to somebody!

But speaking as someone who always wondered why there are so many translations and which one she should use, I thought some history might be interesting to you too.

Note: I am not planning to wade too far into the debate between Catholics and Protestants about which books should be included in the Bible. Rather, this article is about something more fundamental that no one ever taught me: “How do I know which Bible translation is best for me?”

Who wrote the Bible?

When we look at our Bibles, we see that they are books. Written words on a page. Then, we think about how the written words came to be on the page in the first place. Well, of course the author wrote them down, right?! And then someone discovered their writings and compiled things into a kind of anthology... and here it is sitting on my desk. Seems logical.

Except this is not even close to how the Bible came to be!

First, we have to recognize that some of the content in the Bible predates writing. Yes, it is really THAT old! The newer parts came from a time when just a few people in society knew how to read and write. And even fewer had access to enough papyrus to capture their words!

When I learned this, it blew my mind to realize that the Gospels and letters of the New Testament emerged from an oral culture and were copied, preserved, and shared long before most people could own a written copy. This may come as a surprise to you too.

Where did the Bible come from?

So how did we get this book? And how do we know what was actually said? Well, we largely have our Jewish brothers and sisters to thank for that. They had a rich oral tradition where people literally memorized the exact words to thousands of stories. Without going too deeply into this, they took tremendous pride in preserving their heritage and even tested themselves to be sure their memorization was juuuuuust right. Eventually, older stories were written down. Scribes started capturing the teachings of contemporary teachers and leaders. Some teachers and leaders eventually had access to their own scribes, so they could dictate their words directly.

Wait! Before you dismiss the Bible as unreliable hearsay, know that multiple manuscripts have been found from different times and in many different places. They show remarkable continuity, even while containing copying differences that scholars carefully compare. Many of the small discrepancies involve transposed letters or flip-flopped words here and there.

Truly, it is just incredible, dare I say miraculous?, how carefully these words have been protected, preserved, and passed down to us!

OK, now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about how the Bible came to be pulled together into one book. Regarding the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures were compiled into the Tanakh. Then, from approximately 500 CE to 1000 CE, Jewish scribes and scholars known as the Masoretes carefully preserved what we call the Masoretic Text.

The Masoretes checked every letter and every word in the Tanakh as they copied it. Their work preserved the Hebrew and Aramaic text and added systems of vowels and notes to guide reading and transmission. “Their intention was not to interpret the meaning of the Scriptures but to transmit to future generations the authentic Word of G‑d.”

Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Bibles do not always contain the same Old Testament collection. If this matters to you, check whether the edition you are considering includes the Apocrypha or Deuterocanon and learn why your tradition receives the canon it does.

Why are there so many translations?

If you were a leader in the early church, and you saw the need to share the sacred texts with people outside the Jewish tradition, what would you do? You would need to make the Scriptures available in the languages people could read and understand.

In Jesus’s time, predating the church, the Old Testament writings had already been translated into Greek. This was called the Septuagint. It was produced for Greek-speaking Jewish communities over time, beginning centuries before Jesus’s birth. Later, as the teachings of Jesus and other New Testament leaders were written and collected, those writings also needed to be copied, shared, and eventually translated into local languages.

For the sake of brevity, I am going to gloss over more than 1,000 years of church meetings. One important outcome was the Vulgate, a Latin Bible primarily translated by St. Jerome. Jerome was commissioned in 382 CE to produce an acceptable Latin version from the various Latin translations then in use. Over time, the Vulgate became the standard Latin Bible of the Roman Catholic Church.

Which version of the Bible is most accurate?

There are over 450 English translations to choose from! And if you use the YouVersion Bible app, you will need to select from among many of them.

For those who are new to Scripture and who seek a translation grounded in the best available manuscript evidence, I personally prefer the NRSV translation. The NRSV and NRSVue aim to be accurate, readable, and as literal as possible while still using clear contemporary English.

If you are more interested in a meaning-for-meaning English translation, then the NLT or NIV are excellent choices!

Or perhaps you are looking for a more poetic interpretation or for an amplified version that incorporates more of the words and phrases you hear in everyday life?

As I said at the outset, there is no one “right” answer for every reader. But it is critically important to understand the objectives of each version, how it was created, and then to prayerfully discern which translation or translations are best for you.

Alan Bennett compiled an excellent resource 4 to help us wrestle with the questions that go into making a translation choice. The essays in his compilation were aimed at whether the NRSV is the “best” translation. Set that aside and apply his questions to the translation you are considering.

No translation is perfect, but a faithful translation can help you encounter Scripture clearly and deeply.

What translation are you reading now, and what would help you choose one you can return to with confidence?

Sources:

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Masoretic Text: Jewish Bible,” accessed January 23, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Masoretic-text.

2. Kathleen Mulhern, “How Many Versions of the Bible Are There?,” Patheos, October 25, 2023, https://www.patheos.com/answers/how-many-versions-of-the-bible.

3. Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé and Jacobus A. Naudé, “The Revised Standard Version (1952) and Its Revisions as a Linear Emergence of the Tyndale-King James Version Tradition,” HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 78, no. 1 (2022): e1–e9, https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v78i1.7647.

   
   

4. Alan D. Bennett, “The NRSV: A Teaching Guide,” Religious Education 85, no. 2 (1990): 255–78.